4 ms·

Indeed. In my home town we had the ‘metric martyr’, a greengrocer who defied EU law and continued selling bananas in metric measures. There was a whole court t

• riffraff 2y ago
  > continued selling bananas in metric measures. Probably in imperial measures? Unless bananas were somehow sold in metric grams and the EU imposed some weird unit I don't know about.
  • pdpi 2y ago
    Yup, you're right. From the link: > The prosecution of Sunderland greengrocer Steven Thoburn for selling bananas in imperial measures helped turn public opinion against the EU
    • jen729w 2y ago
      Brain fart from me, yep!
• autoexecbat 2y ago
  An actual arrest seems wildly disproportionate for this. Simple administrative fines should have been enough
  • snapplebobapple 2y ago
    Even fines seem wildly disproportionate. Its one thing to regulate how one interacts with the gocernment, it is quite a lot less appropriate for government to regulate private transactions when the validity is easily and cheaply verifiable by either party.
    • outop 2y ago
      Regulating weights and measures is a basic function of government since Babylonian times.
      • randombits0 2y ago
        Sure but dictating what units to use is a bit overboard. A pound should be a pound and a kilo a kilo but what units I use in commerce is my business, not the state’s.
        • autoexecbat 2y ago
          While a kilogram is kilogram, a pound has an accepted definition and plenty of unexpected ones. Is it a troy pound, a tower pound, a london pound, a metric pound?
      • informedDissent 2y ago
        [dead]
    • surgical_fire 2y ago
      One of the main roles of governments is regulating private transactions. Also, he should have done what every supermarket does around here and sell bananas at a flat price per bunch.
      • informedDissent 2y ago
        [dead]
• seabass-labrax 2y ago
  To be pedantic though, refusing to comply with a recently-passed law is not whistleblowing; it is civil disobedience.
  • gfourfour 2y ago
    You’re right, that is pedantic
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• shiroiushi 2y ago
  It would have been a lot easier for him if he had simply sold the bananas at a flat per-banana price. That's typically how many grocery stores in the US sell them (notably Trader Joe's). Here in Japan, they typically sell them in small bunches for a fixed price, with the small bananas sold at a lower price (for a group of 3 or 4) and the larger ones at a higher price next to them. There's no need to weigh bananas at the point at the point of sale at all.
• b3lvedere 2y ago
  "The appeal failed in 2002 and Steven returned to work but things for him and the country were never the same again. He died aged 39 after a heart attack in 2004 leaving a widow, Leigh, their young children Georgia and Jay and a son Rhys from a previous relationship. Leigh also passed away in 2017." To die of the stress caused by (indirectly) being enforced to use a 'new' measurement system must be one of the weirdest causes of deaths i have ever read about.